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This essay concerns slavery in ancient Greece, and aims not only to present facts, but also some general philosophy of the phenomenon slavery. An important question is: was ancient Greek society based on slavery? In trying to answer this, a historical background will be given.
There is one complication when dealing with ancient Greece, concerning slavery. To many researchers this is a delicate matter; the Greek society, which has given us so much to hold in pride, was actually based on petty slavery, the degradation of other human beings. Therefore, it may be assumed that historians could have glorified the actual historical facts, perhaps unwittingly, when drawing conclusions on the evidence left from this time. This might have been done by glorifying the relationship between the Greek and their slaves, or by ignoring slavery altogether. Evidence is relatively scarce; for example Greek mythology and literature rarely mentions details of slave-keeping, but instead concentrates on the adventures of heroes and gods. Some factual documents mention slavery in more depth, but the figures are often questionable. It is important that the reader has this in mind when reading the following historical summary.
In early Greek tribes, there were no slaves. Instead when they fought among each other, prisoners of war were killed. Later, when people realised that the prisoners could be put to work, or sold, they were kept as slaves.
Usually, the victorious warlords of a battle would divide the prisoners among one another. The slave-traders would follow the armies in their progress. Great slave-markets were held in the Greek city-states that bordered on Barbarian countries, where wars were commonplace. Not all slaves were wartime captives, though. Many were born into slavery, since a slave's child was the property of her master. Most of these unfortunate babes were left to die, though. It was reasoned that it was too expensive to raise and feed the child until he or she reached working age. In addition, if a debtor was unable to repay his loans, he had to sell himself into slavery to pay them. The father of a family, who was considered in absolute charge of his family members could sell them as slaves whenever he wished, a great temptation for poor people. So there were many sources of slaves, and many slave-traders made a considerable fortune dealing with them.
The best-known region when it comes to mapping the extent of slavery is Attica, the region around Athens. Historians have deduced that probably one fourth of the population were slaves. That would be 20 000 slaves and 60 000 free citizens and foreigners, including women and children. Nothing points toward a widespread use of slaves in agriculture, as most farms were small and kept by peasant proprietors, who would not need slaves even if they could afford it. Some richer landowners with large properties would rent most of their land to free farmers, but keep slaves on their own estate.
Artisans who could afford it bought slaves to train, hoping that the slave would take care of business as they retired at older age. Some factories were based on slaves as workers, for example in areas such as weapon and shield making. These industries had dozens of slaves each, but were not all that common. The great silver mines in Attica could employ tens of thousands, and were very important for the economy of Athens. Educated slaves were engaged in teaching young Athenians in rhetorics and mathematics. All professions were probably at one time or another held by slaves except for, of course, any position in the government.
The Spartans' slaves had a different life. In many ways, Athens and Sparta are the very extremes of ancient Greece, the reverse polarities when it comes to culture and society. There, the slaves outnumbered Spartans twenty to one, and were very strictly ruled, to prevent rebellion. The slaves of Athens were probably kept somewhat more liberally. While Spartan citizens were all focused on war and preparing for it, the slaves had to do all work and provide the city with food.
The elite of the city-states were labour-free men, whose work was done by slaves that were bought and sold, and had no rights whatsoever. During war, anybody could become a slave.
Humans are without doubt the most flexible animal available for doing work, even though we do not excel in brute force. It is no wonder then, that a group of people, owned like cattle or other work-animals, were a strong contender for doing work for other people. Of course it was advantageous not to pay them anything except for a supply of food. This group of people are the slaves. In a civilization at Greece's level of technology, a better workforce would be hard to come by.
All evidence points towards that slaves were a very important factor in Greek society. One might even claim that they were indeed its foundation, or that slavery as wide-spread as in Greece would be the foundation of any society using them. They simply offer flexibility and adaptability even today's high-tech machines cannot offer. While slaves hindered the development of practical applications of science, they made it possible for the philosophers to concentrate on the theoretic aspects in their luxurious spare time. There simply was no need for machines, when you could do any job just by making enough slaves work with it.
There is one very outstanding aspect of human life that has often been exploited, taken advantage of and abused. It is our psyche, that can be molded like clay, more easily in our youth than later, and some people are more susceptible to this than other. A popular term is brainwash, which is perhaps a vivid word to describe the phenomenon. This can be a planned process by people assigned to systematically alter the way people think and behave, often practiced by sect or cult leaders. One could claim, though, that just by making something a part of a peoples culture, parents do this very same thing to their children when raising them. Not with bad intentions, of course. Humans have to learn everything from their surrounding environment, while lower animals are controlled to a much bigger extent by their instincts.
Slavery was very much a part of Greek society, and children learned to accept it as their parents had before them. The only way people can treat other people like slaves, is by believing that they are not worth as much, even thinking of them as equals of filthy beasts. The slaves, too, had to know that they were destined to slavery, and that they could not do anything about it, since it was the natural way of life. In this aspect, the Greek made a mistake in keeping prisoners of war as slaves, since they are much more prone to rebellion. They know what it is like to be a free man or woman, and can fight to regain that freedom. A slave since birth has a different basis and a slave mentality, i. e. the reluctancy to do things unless commanded to do so.
We know of many other occurences of slavery in history. All that is needed is an excuse to take advantage of an animal that is so uniquely intelligent and adaptible, that in sufficient numbers, they can accomplish anything. An excuse to abuse your peers. The very superficial and obvious physical difference of other peoples, like for example negroes, has provided an excuse in the past. Even today, the equivalents of slaves are exploited, albeit rarely, with sheer greed providing the sole excuse.
For the individual in any society, slavery changes a lot. By taking advantage of a large group of people, the quality of life of a privileged elite is radically improved. From a very evolutionistic point of view, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Modern society is very different from any that has been before, though. By focusing on the individual, more people than ever before have higher standards of life than ever before, but it all has a cost. It is pushing the capabilities of the Earth to its very limits. Humans have always been unequal, just like all other animals following the "law of the jungle", and perhaps that is how nature in it's incompassionate cruelty would have wanted it to be still, and it is. Many people still live in poverty and hunger.
In a way, what can be accomplished using slaves is less taxing on our planet than what methods we use to improve quality of life today, but with slavery more people are psychologically and physically hurt.
Handout on Ancient Greece p. 1
World History - Patterns of civilization Beers, Burton F. pp. 74 through 97
Ekonomisk-historiska teman till antikens ekonomi Andersson, Bertil and Nygren, Ingemar pp. 21 through 41